


Superstition and Fear

by sparxwrites



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Agender Character, Antagonism, Demigods, Gen, Illusions, Magic, Non-human characters, Sarcasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2372306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I feel like you, of all people, have little room to complain about superstition. You practically feed off it,” Kirin reminds them.<br/>“I feed off fear.” Lying smiles wide; shows a mouthful of neat, pointed teeth and licks their tongue over them in a surprisingly threatening gesture. “An entirely different thing. Fear is rational, superstition is not.”</p>
<p>(In which Kirin and Lying have a rather unproductive conversation.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superstition and Fear

**Author's Note:**

> nothing much bad in this one guys, but lying does do some horror-esque special effects with his magic, and there is a very briefly mentioned and very temporary character death - this being minecraft, people just respawn.

“And the universe said I love you. And the universe said, _you have played the game well_.” Kirin’s voice is soft, even as he reads the final rites to the crumpled body at his feet. “You are the daylight, the night, the light you seek and the darkness you fight. And the universe said you are not alone – you are not separate from every other thing. Wake up from the dream; begin a new dream, a better dream. Wake up.”

Strife doesn’t stir, a empty shell of cold flesh and twisted armour.

The demon he and Kirin had summoned lies dead several feet away, slain minutes after it had finally taken down Strife with a lucky blow to a weakened section of the metal plating covering his stomach. Kirin isn’t paying attention to it, eyes focused on Strife’s corpse.

“You do realise that’s a rather pointless exercise, don’t you?” Lying doesn’t look all that impressed, standing half-cloaked in shadows and watching the proceedings with malevolently glittering eyes. “He’s likely already waking up in his bed and cursing your existence. Not that I blame him. I do the same thing from time to time, even _without_ you having indirectly killed me.”

Kirin ignores them, holds his hand out over the body until it breaks into glitching sparks, fading into the air. “It’s tradition,” he says eventually, doesn’t turn around.  “Considering he died whilst I was contracting his services, I feel at least partially responsible.”

“Tradition?” scoffs Lying, derisive and dismissive. “It’s superstition.”

The only response they get to that is quiet laughter. “I feel like you, of all people, have little room to complain about superstition. You practically feed off it,” Kirin reminds them, watching the final flickers of Strife’s body as it breaks down into shattered light and information until there’s nothing left but air.

“I feed off _fear_.” Lying smiles wide; shows a mouthful of neat, pointed teeth and licks their tongue over them in a surprisingly threatening gesture. Between one blink and the next, their pupils vanish, leave their eyes white and glowing – and even Kirin shudders a little at the unnaturalness of it. “An entirely different thing. Fear is rational, superstition is not.”

“Fear is certainly rational when _you’re_ roaming the forest,” says Kirin dryly, schooling his expression into one of bored calm. Reacting to Lying’s antics tends to only encourage them, and he really has no desire to do that.

Lying giggles, the noise disturbingly childlike. “Why thank you,” they say, sweeping a low and mocking bow and deftly catching their hat when it drops from their head under the force of gravity. “You really are too kind.”

“I’m fairly sure I’m not,” mutters Kirin, grits his teeth as Lying simply chuckles louder. The sound is odd, echoing and faintly distant as though caught on the wind, and Kirin rolls his eyes at the their love of drama. “Don’t you have anything better to do than make a nuisance of yourself? I mean, I appreciate the help with the sorting system, it was very useful, but…”

He tries to think of a polite way to say that Lying isn’t exactly welcome on his property any more, and settles with, “You can be a very annoying house-guest, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Lying smiles wide again, blinks their eyes back to slit-pupiled normalcy. “And trust me when I say I have plenty of better things to do than play babysitter for you,” they add, a hint of resentment in their voice. “Unfortunately the Circle was rather clear in their demands that someone keep an eye on you, in light of the number of rules you’ve chosen to blatantly flout recently, so here I am.”

Kirin sighs heavily, scrubs a hand over his face and scratches absently at the curve of his jaw. “So I’m stuck with you then.”

“For the foreseeable future, certainly.” Lying steps forward a little, into the torchlight. Even without the murky cover of trees to cast weird shapes in the darkness, the shadows that curl around them seem just a little too deep to be natural.

They don’t quite move – not when Kirin looks directly at them, at least – but there’s an uncomfortable sense of winding and _shifting_ every time he catches sight of them out the corner of his eye.

“Don’t mind the shadows,” says Lying absently, noting the direction of Kirin’s gaze. They brush careful hands down the front of their robes and watch as the little twists of darkness curl lovingly around their fingers, dripping off the ends of their nails. “They’re a little shy, I’m afraid. Or perhaps they just don’t like you.”

Kirin tries, and fails, to ignore the petty insult, unable as ever to stop Lying from getting under his skin. “That’s not very frightening,” he says, smiling ever so slightly. “Shadows that are frightened of other people. _Not_ very horror movie at all.”

“They’re only young,” says Lying, serenely, bares pointed teeth in a Cheshire-cat expression that seems too threatening to be called a grin. “They’ll grow.”

As Kirin watches, their smile widens, stretches until it spills jagged and wavering off the edges of their face into something not physically possible. The illusions don’t bother him; he’s far too used to Lying playing around with glamours to do much more than wince a little at how unpleasant it looks.

“Stop that,” he says, finally having had enough when shadows begin to drip from the smile, tinged unpleasantly red. He’s not exactly in the mood to humour Lying’s antics; not with a temporarily-dead solutionist and a messily-slain demon that was only the beginning of what he’d planned to do today. “We need to leave. Once Strife wakes up, he’ll try and contact me back at my home, and I’d rather he wasn’t wandering around there unsupervised.”

Lying’s smile slides back down to normal, mostly-human proportions. “I have _no_ idea what you’re talking about,” they lie easily. “I’m sure I wasn’t doing _anything_. Hold still, would you?”

They’re reluctant to step fully out of the comfortingly shadowy overhang of the trees, but they do nonetheless, waiting until Kirin’s stopped shifting impatiently before moving into the light. The flare of the torches forces them to narrow their eyes, still not entirely used to such brightness after the endless darkness of the well.

“Can I move yet?” asks Kirin, impatient and a touch sarcastic, eager to get going. There are several fairly sensitive and powerful things in his house that he’s sure Strife could find and mess up with ease. The prospect of having to rebuild his base from the ground up if the alien manages to accidentally trigger something he shouldn’t is not one that fills him with joy.

“Patience,” says Lying, waiting for their eyes to adjust before they move again.

They scramble up Kirin with all the grace of a particularly agile cat – a hand on his shoulder, a foot braced on his hip and the small of his back, fingers curled carefully around one antler – until they’re perched on his shoulder. Static sparks bite at their hands, at any skin unfortunate enough to be exposed, and they bat them off like they would fireflies, murmuring admonishments at the unruly magic.

“Behave,” Lying tells them, sternly, before tapping Kirin’s head to get his attention. “Your magic is _very_ poorly behaved, you know. Terrible manners. It must have inherited that from you.”

Kirin bears being used as a living climbing frame with ill humour, muttering irritably and shaking himself a little in a futile attempt to surreptitiously dislodge Lying. It doesn’t work, and rather than fall Lying simply secures themself further; hooks an arm through the curl of one of Kirin’s horns, and wraps invisible-glamoured tails around Kirin’s neck to anchor themself a little more firmly.

The soft fur of the tails tickles against his skin, and Kirin resists the urge to scratch at his neck. “Are you _quite_ done?” he asks through slightly gritted teeth, exhales through his nose in a sharp huff.

Lying flicks the tip of one tail at Kirin’s face, quietly amused by the demigod’s attempts to stifle a sneeze in the wake of the motion. “Yes, I think so.” They reach up to drum blood-red fingernails against the base of Kirin’s antler, impatient. “Onwards!”

“I’m not a _horse_ ,” points out Kirin indignantly, but he does curl a hand around Lying’s ankles to prevent them from falling as he starts to walk – weaves magic made easy by familiarity around his legs and watches the trees move past them with unnatural speed.

Humming thoughtfully, Lying nods, holds onto their hat with their free hand when the wind and low-hanging branches threaten to whip it off their head.  “No,” they agree, “but you are a fast, mostly comfortable, and _highly_ convenient method of transportation that saves me having to use my own magic, so that must be taken into consideration.”

Kirin rumbles low in his chest, somewhere between amused and indignant. “I _will_ drop you.”

“You wouldn’t _dare_.”

They’re right, of course – he wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean he can’t threaten to. He deliberately lurches a little on his next step instead of answering; listens to the way Lying grumbles at the jolt, feels the way they grabs wildly at his horns to stay balanced, and laughs.


End file.
